Telecom Expense Management: Reining in Runaway Mobile Costs

Mobile technology is any type of mobile device that supports an organization’s employees, customers, members, or patients. As the speed of mobile technology advances are clocking in at the speed of sound, companies are finding it more and more difficult to plan for and control the runaway costs of mobility.

Where to Start

Has your organization experienced a regular occurrence of blowing past your monthly mobile budget? If yes, you are not alone. And most companies don’t see an end in sight. Mobile cost management, or Telecom Expense Management (TEM), has become a contorted puzzle that can stump even the most experienced IT and telecom professionals. Looking in the rearview mirror rarely sheds light on where it all went wrong.

Working with hundreds of organizations that depend on mobile (crossing a wide variety of industries: healthcare, supply chain, hospitality, field services, retail, telecommunications, and manufacturing), we have realized that most businesses don’t have any idea of the specific culprits of what is driving up their mobile costs. However, based on our visibility across the wide variety of customers we serve, we have concluded that there is a reasonable answer to managing mobile costs. It starts with getting all your critical mobile cost components priced under one predictable monthly fee.

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t if you know what needs to be included in these costs to cover your organization’s needs. This can be as simple as looking at Device-as-a-Service (DaaS), where you outsource the device procurement, repair, and replacement functions for a flat fee. Or, ideally, it also includes Managed Mobility Services (MMS) that ensure you support your organization’s endpoint management, security, and end-user help desk needs as well.

Assessing Your Enterprise Mobility Needs

We recommend that you start with a look at your reality to determine what a “flat fee” agreement should look like for your organization. That starts with understanding the nature of your mobile enterprise by providing answers to questions like these:

• Do you need to be able to manage large device/application upgrades periodically?
• Are your mobile users highly motivated to have the latest shiny new mobile phone/device (a.k.a. damaged and lost device incidents spike with new device launches)?
• Do you have employees who travel internationally?
• Do you have international customers that use your mobile solutions?
• Do you have a multitude of mobile device suppliers?
• Do you have complicated mobile service contracts?
• Are mobile usage fees unpredictable?
• Do you have mobile user groups that require 24/7 help desk support?
• Are there specific mobile users that inundate your help desk?
• Do your mobile users need a lot of support to keep your mobile applications productive?
• Have you ever had mobile device replacement or repair fire drills that required you to pay a premium to put out?
• Have you ever completed a mobile rollout to find your devices were outdated by the end of the project?
• Are there times you experience a severe spike in end-user help desk tickets and you haven’t been able to respond to the demand?
• Have you ever been surprised by carrier rate increases?
• Are your device suppliers able to provide the provisioning services you need?

These are just a few of the questions that will help your organization understand your mobile program needs clearly. From there, you can look for a solution that will solve your expense management challenges. This will be the only way to truly get control of runaway mobility costs once and for all.